Jersey Shore!

Warning...this is going to be a super classy blog post. Today is one of our good friend's birthday. She is from New Jersey, and this weekend we had a big Jersey Shore birthday party for her. If you've never seen Jersey Shore (I had not until this party) you're not missing out on much. Here's a little view of how classy the cast of that reality show is:

Apparently this is actually a pretty standard style for Jersey too. So that's what we went for and it was awesome! We had so much fun, and no we would not normally dress like that!

So much fun, and as hard as we tried to be as Jersey as possible, I think we were still no where near as trashy as the people on that show! Now back to reality!

Winthrop

Last week Ryan had to take a little 'work trip' out to Winthrop, WA; just over the cascade mountains. He has a house that is about to start construction out there, so we (he) had to take some plans to the city to get the project permitted, and meet with some potential contractors to see some of their work and get them started on the bidding process for the project. Ben and I went along just to hang out ;) 

This is the project house that Ryan designed. The site is on the side of a mountain, which is awesome!

The little town of Winthrop 

Walking through Winthrop

Ben enjoyed the site visits

Enjoying the river right behind our hotel

I'm not sure why I look so awkward skipping rocks... 

This area has really started to become a big attraction for mountain getaways for wealthy Seattleites. It's already starting to become a draw for modern architects, so getting a house built out there will hopefully just be the first of many for Ryan. While we were there, we visited a few other modern houses. This is one by Tom Kundig that was just finishing up.

We got home on the weekend, just in time to celebrate Easter with some friends! We had a little cookout, adult easter egg hunt, and played some yard games at our friends' house on Mercer Island. It was soooo nice out, that I even got a tan!!

Competitions!

Ryan and I have both been getting really into our fitness the past year. One of the most awesome thing about being part of the crossfit community is that you meet and bond with so many people who all have the same interest and goal of improving their fitness. It's been an awesome and inspirational experience thus far! The big competition in Crossfit is the Crossfit Games which will take place in the summer. In order to get into the games, there are several other steps you have to get through. Right now it's the crossfit open. Anyone can sign up for the open and there's a work out posted every week that you have to do and record your score. The top scores after the open is done will move on to the regional games. The top athletes in that move onto the National Crossfit Games. Our gym has quite a few people competing in the open and submitting their scores, including Ryan!! I didn't actually sign up for it this year because I'm not quite at the point with most of the heavier weights were I would be able to complete a lot of the events. The workout for this week, however, was one that I could do and I did it pretty well actually! It didn't have heavy weights, but I did have to do 150 wall balls! That's taking a 14lb medicine ball, doing a deep squat, then standing up and throwing the ball up 9ft to a mark on the wall. 150 is A LOT of those, and I was able to do it a lot faster than quite a few people! I did that on Friday, which made my quads burn pretty bad the next few days, which wouldn't be such a big deal, except I had also signed up for a half marathon that I did on Sunday! I signed up for the race 2 weeks ago after I did a 13.5 mile training run to convince myself I could do it, since I haven't been running as much since I started crossfit. I figured that if nothing else, this would be a good run to prepare myself for the summer running season. I ended up doing even better than I was expecting and ended up with over a 5 min PR!!. My final time was 1:42:35 which is a 7:50 min/mile pace! This is the first half marathon that I broke an 8 min/mile pace! I was the 65th female out of 1560. I felt pretty good about that especially for the first half marathon of the year!

This race was on Mercer Island (in the middle of Lake Washington) and two of our friends have just moved out there to a house just off the race course. They joined Ryan cheering me on right before the 12 mile mark and snapped a silly pic of me running.

My Sweet Old Lady Puppy

First of all, I have been writing a few too many sad blogs lately. I think I need a vacation. 

Friday we had to say goodbye to Tara, or as I like to call her, 'My Sweet Old Lady Puppy'. It was absolutely heartbreaking having to make that decision to put her down, but she had gotten to the point were she couldn't stand at all and just laid in one spot all day. Now that it's done, as much as I miss her, I'm really happy she's not suffering anymore, and we definitely made the right decision. I'm glad I got to bring her out to Seattle and have lots of adventures with her the past few years!

My Whole30

One of the bloggers I follow did the Whole 30 challenge in the month of January. Check out her reflection blog here. After reading this blog post, I was inspired to do the same and see what kind of results I got! 

The idea of this challenge comes from the website Whole9. The idea is that you go 30 days with no sugar, grains, dairy, legumes, or any artificial ingredients. The 30 days is supposed to cleanse your body and allow you to determine which foods are causing harm to your body. The people who came up with this challenge also wrote a book explaining in more detail how certain foods can negatively effect the way your body functions. It also goes into more details about what your can/can't eat in those 30 days. Basically meat, veggies, and fruit are what you can eat. 

After reading the blogger's blog on her results and several other blogs about peoples' great results from the program, I was excited to give it a try. Yesterday was my last day of it, so now I can give my feedback on how it went! Here are my before and after shots! 

My positive thoughts on the challenge: I did lose 7 lbs in the last month, which I think you can see in the photos. I feel much more toned. I have gained a lot of muscle since I started crossfit 7 months ago, so I think that's starting to show more.

My negative/apathetic thoughts on the challenge: The first week of the challenge was awful. My body was transitioning from burning sugars/carbs to burning fat, so for a while it was really confused and burning nothing which meant no energy for me! I went from being able to run 10+ miles easily to barely being able to run a mile. It was embarrassing. Luckily that didn't last too long. Slowly my energy started coming back. What I am slightly disappointed about is that I have not experienced all the amazingly positive results that so many other people seemed to have! I do not have super hero energy as a result of this. In fact, I'd say I'm still trying to get back to the amount of energy I had before starting this thing. I do not have magically clear skin; I notice no difference. I do not sleep like a baby. I still have to take my sleeping pills every night and still wake up throughout the night (mostly due to dogs moving around and making noise). I don't think I have better moods, in fact I often feel more stressed out trying to figure out what I can/can't be eating. 

So I guess my conclusion is that this challenge made my body a more efficient fat burner and as a result, I lost 7lbs of fat. So where I go from here...2 weeks after I started my Whole30 challenge, our crossfit gym started a 'Whole Life' Challenge. The nutrition rules for it is similar to what I've been following with the Whole30, but it also includes things like exercising and stretching everyday and drinking half your body weight in water every day. So Ryan and I both joined up with that challenge as well. So as I finish my 30 days of the Whole30, I still have 37 days left of the other challenge. One difference in the 'Whole Life' Challenge is that it's based on a point system where you lose points if you eat things outside of the rules, but you can make up those points in other ways. So it give you a little more flexibility to not be so rigid with your food. As a result, I fully intend to make a few rule breaks now that I'm done with my strict 30 days! I'll have to report back on how the rest of that challenge goes!

February

If you haven't noticed yet, I've got an awesome new blog header! It was designed by my brother in-law Aaron. How professional do I look now?!?

I don't really have one big thing to post about right now, but there's a few updates on what we've been up to lately! We've been able to spend a few days taking advantage of some fun winter sports just outside of Seattle!

 Ben had a lot of fun when I took him snowshoeing!

 Ryan and I spent a day cross country skiing. It was a beautiful day out and a great workout!

 In the month of February we also had the pleasure of celebrating our second wedding anniversary!! We decided to do a little weekend getaway to Vancouver to celebrate a little.

In other news, we've still been spending lots of time with all our buddies at the Crossfit Gym. I've really loved becoming part of such an awesome fitness minded community and we've made some awesome friends there. We've also made a lot of progress in our own fitness. Check out Ryan as he gets a ring muscle-up! Very few people can actually do these, so it's a pretty big deal, and Ryan's been trying for a while to get them and now he's got them!

My Grandpa

This past Friday my Grandpa passed away. The funeral is today. I have lost a few other close family members in my life, but this is the first time I've had such mixed feelings about his passing. Obviously I am selfishly sad. He will be missed by so many people. He has a wife of 68 years, 5 sons, 4 daughter-in-laws, 13 grandchildren, 11 grandchildren-in-laws (one more engaged), 13 great-grandchildren with one more already on the way, and I'm sure many many more to follow. We all have so many great memories of him. I remember every day around 4 him asking where we were going to go for 'the big one' (supper), and him telling the server it was your birthday even if it wasn't so you would get a free dessert and get sung to. I remember him calling me Pamela Jean, despite the fact that my name is Pamela Lynn. He said I had so many other random nicknames that he should make one up too. I remember learning and playing sooooo many card games with him at their cottage on Spider Lake. I remember visiting my Grandparents in Florida with my brother and cousin; my Grandpa introduced us to a great frozen custard place called sweetberries. Randomly throughout the days we would hear him say 'Mmmmm, Sweetberries', as if he was still thinking about the frozen goodness...we still laugh about it to this day ;) I remember when I moved out to Seattle he told me he always loved to listen to when the Detroit Tigers played the Mariners because he could hear the trains go by in the background because there's a big station right by the stadium. I definitely remember at all of our weddings that Grandma and Grandpa alllllways won the anniversary dance (the longest married couple gets to dance the longest). What an awesome example they are to all of their Grandchildren of a life long marraige. 

For all these reasons and so many more, I am mourning the loss of my Grandpa and will miss his presence in my life. I am also, however, overjoyed that his time has come. I remember over 13 years ago My Grandpa told me he was going to go home to Jesus at the turn of the millennium. I was slightly horrified at the time thinking 'why on earth would you say that to your teenage granddaughter'?!? Clearly he was mistaken about leaving us in the year 2000 and God kept him here another 13 years. Over those 13 years he's made other similar comments about it being his time to go. I think it's just been recently that I've realized that he was never saying he was unhappy or wanted to die. What he was really saying is that he's had an awesome life and was completely happy with everything he's done and he was ready to dance on streets of gold and sit at the feet of Jesus. For that reason I am really happy for him that he has finally made it there. Also, what an awesome testimony for the rest of us! It just reminds me to live life to the fullest and spend time with the ones your love, but our end goal should be to spend eternity with our heavenly father. I love how excited my Grandpa was to do that. I love that we all have so many great memories with him and I love that we'll get to spend eternity with him and I can only hope that when I'm nearly 90 years old I'll have the same happiness with my life and eagerness for my eternal life.